I have just been served with a notice to move out by my landlord. So has my neighbour, who is 35 weeks pregnant. It's effective immediately, we have no legal redress, and we have simply nowhere else to go. I won't be made homeless as I'm a Traveller and can take my home with me. But where can I put it? The old network of traditional stopping places has been dug and ditched, the common land enclosed, and no space has been left for the willfully unhoused.

The threatened eviction at Dale Farm has focused attention on the issue of Travellers' accommodation. Public sympathy has been limited as they are, after all, in breach of planning permission: "Why should there be one law for Travellers and another for us?" is a common complaint. Let me explain why.

Every inch of this country is tightly regulated. To be considered suitable for residential use, land has to lie within the development limits of an existing conurbation. And houses prices are incredibly inflated, which means that once a plot of land has planning permission for a house, its worth increases exponentially. It then makes no financial sense to site caravans on it. So, because houses are expensive, I can't buy residential land to live on, even though I don't want a house.

Furthermore, prejudice against Travellers is so severe that having Travellers living nearby is presumed to adversely affect house values. So I have to take account of how "unsightly" my home may appear to a house dweller, and try to find somewhere where it is invisible. Their discrimination against me means that I have to hide. I personally don't see caravans as more visually intrusive than estates of Barratt Homes, but I didn't make the planning rules.

The planning system needs to be weighted differently for house dwellers and for Travellers, and there is no inherent unfairness about this, because we have different standards of living. I do without many of the luxuries that house dwellers enjoy: of space, appliances and possessions. In a supposedly free democracy, I should be able to live the lifestyle of my choice, or birth, or culture. After all, if house dwellers wanted to abandon their dishwashers and their central heating and their instant hot baths and join me, they could.

The previous government recognised this and issued a planning circular (01/2006) allowing Travellers to settle on agricultural land. It gave local authorities targets to make provision for Traveller sites. In fact, 90% of planning applications by Travellers are still refused (compared with 20% of non-Traveller applications), and local councils squirmed around, counting and recounting Travellers (a fluid and uncountable quantity) until they belatedly arrived at some figures to which they could be held accountable.

The new localism bill abolishes these targets right at the point when they might have translated into some site provision. Now councils are free to make up their own ideas of how many Travellers they want to accommodate. ("None" is a figure that springs to mind.) It also abolishes circular 01/2006, because there is a widespread perception that the system is unfair and that it is easier for one group of people to gain planning permission, and that this creates resentment and damages community cohesion.

But making a bad system worse is not going to improve community cohesion. If intolerance of Travellers is so great that the general public can't see why they should be allowed planning permission, then it is the job of government to defuse that intolerance, not pander to it.

The worst thing about the localism bill is that it puts nimbys in charge of the planning system. By definition, Travellers can always be made to be somebody else's problem. All an authority has to do is to evict them, and off they go. Our local councillor sent a personal letter to all the houses in the area swearing to do everything in his power to rid the local area of the nuisance of Travellers. This letter was posted to my child's teacher. The man who wrote it used to be a school governor. He is going to be the person deciding on the planning application for a Traveller site. He's not the man to whom this decision should be delegated.

On top of all this, the localism bill limits Travellers' power to claim retrospective planning permission. If I buy a piece of land, I'll have to move on to it, because the alternative is to live by the side of the road with a child and a toddler. If I then apply for retrospective planning permission, that's motivated by need, not greed. What choice do I have?

My family is not homeless. We have a beautiful home that almost certainly consumes less water and electricity than yours. It makes no sense to forcibly remove us from it to put us in an expensive pile of bricks and mortar. There is incredible pressure on public housing in this country, yet Travellers – a group with the self-reliance to create their own housing solution – are being denied the opportunity to do so. All we are asking for is space. It has been estimated that one square mile would provide for all the Travellers who are currently being shunted from one unauthorised site to the next.

We're not actually asking to live in your backyard. Just a mile or so down the road.